Now that I have your attention let me tell you about something very, very cool! The very popular (and easy to find) Inkadinkado is offering a free stamp to anyone who makes a card using their products and mails it to them! You can send up to 3 and get a free stamp per card! How cool is that !?! You can see the details in the March Inka Newsletter. It has inspired me to break out my new “inchie” stamps I got a few weeks ago and play. I made Cricut cutting files (see download links below) to make inchie mats, masks and the inchies themselves, in fact, hardly a scrap of the paper you use to make this goes to waste, love that! Here is what I came up with:

Up until last week I hadn’t scrapped in months and I really missed it but the thought of editing and printing 5 months of photos was overwhelming. Then I thought “hey, who says It has to be perfect anyway?” so I opened the software that came with my Canon Camera and just printed my pics! I cropped some but that was it, I hit the “photo fix” button on my HP printer and just let um print! I have to say scrapping the page was easy because I wasn’t worried about massing up a photo I spent an hour editing! here is the result:

Yes the embossing is sloppy and the handwriting is worse and I didn’t bother to stitch on the buttons (I use my homemade glue dots) but I love the colors and the care free feeling of the page. The shaped paper with the words was the label freebie I gave out on valentines day (cut with SCAL and my cricut enlarged) and I shaped the other paper by hand before I got my expression and you can see how here.

I think some of my favorite pages are the quick, non fussy, imperfect ones that are 100 % fun to make and capture the memory. Isn’t that what scrapbooking is supposed to be about anyway?

Have you heard of the 2sketches4u blog yet? Well it’s pretty cool, every week they post 2 card sketches for you to do and then they pick a winner and they get an awesome prize. This week the challenge is sponsored by Creative Cuts and More! The winner will get a $20 gift certificate to the shop and let me tell you $20 goes a long way in die cuts! I don’t often use sketches because I’m afraid that I either following the sketch too close (just copying) or I’m way off with my ‘devil-may-care’ cardmaking style…what is sketch etiquette anyway? But for fun I thought I’d try, It was fun, here are my attempts:

This is my attempt of sketch #1. The girl is from a free font called Pucca club, you can get a link to that and my free Cricut cutting flies below.

I did this for the second sketch. Again I used a cute Pucca girl for my focal point and a sentiment from Inque boutique (Perfectly Paisley set), dragonfly is from Cricut

Why don’t you try too? It could win you $20 in free die cuts! Speaking of free I have some freebies to share. I made cutting files for the Kimono card:

Get a Design Studio version made with the George cartridge here, it’s a bit different but the same idea.

Download a printable template here, it’s my first time making a pdf file and I didn’t add any text so when you print it you may want to write “Kimono card template” on it so you will remember what the heck it is!

Do you like the cute little Asian girls on the card? Guess what, it’s not a stamp, it’s a free font called Pucca and you can snag it for free here. Grab the word document I made to print my images here (you must also download the font to view it)

I laid out a 2 sheets of the images in Word and printed on cardstock and colored them with Bic Mark its. Ink Jet Printer ink is water/dye based so I knew that I could use solvent based makers on them and the colors would not run. You could also use Sharpies, Copics or Prismacolor markers to color them but I love the inexpensive Mark Its! To get a Copic-like effect start with light colors first and add slightly darker colors to shade around the edges. Easy Peasy! I trimmed my “girls” with my creative Memories circle cutter.

The real stamps I used on the card are by Personal Stamp Exchange (Asian Images) and Inque Boutique/Darice (sentiment). The PSX stamps were some of the first clear stamp ever made and IMHO some of the best. That company is now out of business but I still use their stamps regularly!

I hope you enjoyed the cards and the freebies and I do hope you chek out the 2sketches4u blog and play along too! Till next time happy crafting!

Well, it’s about time I scrapped my Christmas photos! I have been hoarding plastic packaging for months thinking that I would make my own clear album but just as I was about to this cute tabbed 6″x6″ mini album arrived from Creative Cuts and More! I couldn’t pass up using this to make my Christmas mini book…I guess all my plastic packaging will just have to wait!

Nothing says Christmas like a dog in antlers! The title is done in Rub-ons from Tinkering Ink then I painted red watercolor over them to make them pop. The waxy rub-on resists the paint!

The book is made with 10 sheets of thick acetate (20 pages) and is a dream to work with, one thing to remember though, you need to remove the film from BOTH sides of the pages before to start to embellish it! I used paper by K&Co, stamps by Making Memories and Inkadinkado and of course my homemade “dew drops” and my homemade glue dots to hold the thing together! I put a tutorial on the Die Cut Diva blog, please visit it to read my tutorial and see the completed album:

I believe in truth in advertising as my title suggests! I made these cute paper fry boxes with my cricut and SCAL software and thought I’d share the file and project with you.

Download the fry box patterns below. The dark green box was made from the printable pattern, it is only a bit smaller than the one I cut with my Expression. Image: Vintage Image Craft, Stamps: Stampin Up, Rubber Stampede

Wouldn’t these be cute filled with candy on St. Patrick’s day? I stamped the inside and outside of the light green box before assembling and decorating. The boxes only take minutes to make. The images I used came from Vintage image craft. You can download them for free here, thanks Scott and Martin! The images are postcard size in a pdf format. To get them to print small I looked at my printers dialog box (The box that pops up when you click print) and under where it says page handling there is a box where you can choose multiple pages per sheet. I set it so both pages of the pdf file would fit on one sheet of cardstock. I do this a lot with pdf files when I want a smaller image.

You are probably wondering why you would want to know how to do this. Well, I’ll tell you, if you have a Cricut and SCAL software you will be able to cut it, that’s why! I found a cute bunny pattern over at familyfun.com and cut it with my cricut to make this cute card:

Learn to make this card with your cricut.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a cricut, you can print out the pattern, cut out the bunny and trace it on a folded sheet of cardstock and cut it out to make your card that way. But if you have a cricut this is a good trick to know because so many patterns are available for free in pdf format!

Step 1. Go here to find the bunny pattern, click the image so you can see it full size, it is on page 2 of the pdf file. Zoom in on the right hand bunny and press the “print screen” key on your keyboard.

zoom in on the little bunny and press the "print screen" key (top row on the computer keyboard.)

Open your image editing software (I use Paint Shop Pro but photoshop is fine too) and go under edit and paste as a new image.

Crop the image so all that you see is one bunny

Use the "magic wand" tool to select the bunny (click inside the bunny). Then under the adjust menu select hue/saturation/lightness.

Desaturate (make black) the bunny.

Now save this file as bunny.jpg. Open Inkscape and open the bunny.jpg, choose the arrow on the top of left hand tool bar. click on the bunny, you will see a box with arrows at the corners and on the sides of the box around the bunny.

Go under the path menu and choose "trace bitmap"

After you click "trace bitmap" click update and the screen will look like this. Click OK. PLEASE NOTE: The update button does not work in the new version of inkscape, just click "OK"

Save the file.

*Note: If the pattern you are converting is low quality or hand drawn go under path again and choose “simplify”. That will smooth out any bumps and give you a quick, clean cut. This pattern was so clean that I did not have to do this. Using the simplify function can distort your image a bit so only use it on low quality (pixalated) or hand drawn images.

It will automatically save the file as an svg file.

Now you have converted a pfd file into an svg! This method will work with anything you can see on your screen so if you make a design in another program you can convert that too! How fun!

This is how to get this file into SCAL so you can cut it with your cricut. Open scal, under file choose import svg, then select you file and open it! Easy peasy!

The file is imported, to make the card copy and paste the bunny. Flip one of the bunnies and make sure you check "weld" for each and link them up at the tails like this and cut.

There you have it. It wasn’t so hard. Now you can cut dang near anything with your cricut. Leave me a comment if you get stuck, I’m happy to help.

Hello there my loyal blog readers. Do you like glue dots? Do you think they are to pricey? If so you are in for a treat because I figured out how to make them. You will need a bottle of Aleen’s Reposition It glue and something slick to drop the glue onto. I used leftover backing from the sticky vinyl I cut with my cricut but freezer, waxed or leftover sticker backing should be fine. It’s easy just squirt fine drops in rows on the paper and let dry. The glue doesn’t seem to shrink so make the dots (or lines for ribbon) the size you want them. I just bought a bottle of the Reposition it for $3.50 and it will make thousands easily! Do not get the spritz version for this project. (I could not find Reposition it squeeze tube online but Aleenes Tack it over and over again will work and it is cheaper!)To store the dots just cut the paper into strips and gently roll it up. You can also brush this onto the back of your unmounted rubber stamps to make them clink, much cheaper than buying EZ mount foam! Easy and frugal too! Now on to the card:

Stamps: House Mouse, The Rubber Cafe, Design By Lindsay Weirich

Did you know that you can buy House Mouse stamps from The Rubber Cafe? They have awesome prices on them too! I used the Chewable Aspirin stamp to make this cute get well card. I colored the image with watercolor crayons then used a blender pen to blend the colors without wrinkling the paper.

Tip: To get more stamping g done try this: Stamp out a bunch of images, the kind you color such as the House Mouse are best, and keep them in an envelope with a pack or markers, colored pencils or watercolor crayons. When you find yourself with a few extra minutes like when the kids are coloring or when you are watching T.V. grab your envelope and color in a few images. Then later when you have the time you can add them to a card. I do this all the time. Stamp extra while you are at it to trade with other stamping buddies and you have instantly increased your stamp stash and theirs.!

Oh and if you like the dew drops on the card I made those too very inexpensively, see my tutorial here. But if it seems like too much trouble you can get the store bought ones here.